


(we could be) infinite

by daughterofrohan



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Gen, Vormir, sir this is my emotional support canon divergence, which i am apparently still not over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 20:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19117489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofrohan/pseuds/daughterofrohan
Summary: She drops her head onto his shoulder and he laces his fingers through hers and together they sit, staring out over the edge of the cliff, soaking in the fragile moments that they still have.“So,” Natasha says finally, and her voice is hoarse like she’s just been crying. “Are you going to let me do this?”





	(we could be) infinite

**Author's Note:**

> hi welcome to this fic here is a customary list of things:
> 
> -this is an idea that hasn't left me alone since i saw Endgame, and i always knew i was going to write it, i just needed the time to think about it and flesh it out. it still feels only like a part of something to me, and there's a chance that i might revisit it and develop it further in the future so stay tuned.  
> -i am eternally indebted to Sarah (TheRedGlass) for letting me scream at her and for her insightful feedback in the form of Kermit gifs  
> -title is from the song Infinite by Michael Henry and Justin Robinett ([listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iY7uPC6JPM)) (ok idk how many people actually listen to songs i recommend but please PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU)  
> -all star wars references do not reflect this author's opinion on the superior star wars trilogy  
> -and lastly, i'm still not done writing about endgame so keep an eye out for more things coming lol why am i like this

So that’s it then. One of them has to die for the other to get the stone. It’s really not that complicated, when you think about it.

Except that one of them has to  _ die _ , one of  _ them _ has to die, and they can’t agree on who because Natasha’s chosen  _ this _ , of all moments, to be all goddamn  _ noble _ instead of letting him get what he deserves. 

When their guide, whoever the hell he was, had told them that they’d have to lose what they loved, Clint had almost laughed at him, because he was talking to the wrong people. They’ve already lost everything there is to lose.

Except for each other.

He knows Natasha as well as he knows himself, which means he knows that neither one of them wants to be the one to walk away from this. 

“Nat, hey. Can we…can we just press pause on this for a minute?”

Confusion colours her expression. Natasha doesn’t have room for  _ pause _ when she’s on a mission, and he knows this. She’s the type to do what she needs to do, no matter the cost, and cut her losses after the fact. Act first, think later. Even when it’s her own life at stake.  _ Especially _ when it’s her own life at stake.

She shakes her head slowly, still looking at him like he has horns growing out of his head. “Clint, we don’t have  _ time _ , we have to-”

“Time,” he interrupts, “is the only thing we have.” He reaches over, tapping the set of Pym particles that are secured to her belt. “These are going to take us back to a minute after we left. We could stay here for  _ years _ , Nat, and it wouldn’t matter.”

She glances around at the less than appealing scenery, the frigid winds whipping strands of her hair out of her braid, the end of which is already encrusted in ice. “I’d rather not.”

“Can we at least talk? I haven’t seen you in five years.”

The corner of her mouth twitches briefly. “And who’s fault is that?”

“I know.” Clint drags a hand through his hair. “ _ God _ , Nat, I know. But, hey. Come here.” He takes her hand, guiding her over to the precipice, the narrow ledge where the rock meets the nothingness below it. Natasha glances at him uneasily as he sits down so his legs are dangling over the edge of the cliff, tempting fate and danger and everything they’ve built their living on.

“I swear, Barton, if you jump on me…”

“I just want to talk to you.” He tugs on her hand again until she relents, sinking to the ground beside him in a perfect mirror of his position, her movement sending a small stream of pebbles bouncing over the side of the cliff. Clint leans into her slightly, bumping his shoulder against hers. “So. How have you been?”

They’re sitting on another planet, in  _ space _ , on the edge of a cliff that one of them is going to have to jump off of, and they’re catching up just like old friends who are meeting up for coffee after spending time apart. Natasha can’t help it. She laughs.

Clint’s eyes widen momentarily at her reaction, until the hilarity of their situation catches up with him and he begins to laugh with her.

And then they both laugh even harder, because they’re in space, and one of them needs to sacrifice their life for a rock that might save the world, and here they are laughing about it.

“You know,” Natasha tells him, as another gust of wind flings sharp pellets of snow at their faces, and the humour of their situation evaporates to be replaced with stark reality once more. “It’s actually been a rough few years.”

It’s the matter of fact way that she says it, tapping her heel against the edge of the cliff while casually contemplating her own death, that makes Clint feel like a knife has been plunged into his heart. He’s always felt her pain more acutely than he feels his own, and this is no exception. Even Laura had joked about it.  _ I may be your wife _ , she’d told him once,  _ but Natasha’s your soulmate. _

He’d never fully understood the weight of that before.

In a way, now, it feels like too little, too late.

“I missed you,” he tells her.

“You didn’t have to,” she counters.

The five years they spent apart are both a blink of an eye, and an eternity. They’d fallen back together like no time had passed, because that’s what they always do. But now, faced with the finality of this, their last mission, Clint feels like a hundred years would barely begin to scratch the surface of what he needs in order to make up for their lost time.

She drops her head onto his shoulder and he laces his fingers through hers and together they sit, staring out over the edge of the cliff, soaking in the fragile moments that they still have. 

“So,” Natasha says finally, and her voice is hoarse like she’s just been crying. “Are you going to let me do this?”

“You know that I can’t, Natasha.”

“One life to bring everyone back. That’s all it takes.”

“Yeah, one life. Mine.”

“You have a  _ family _ , Clint, I can’t just let you-”

“So do you!” he interrupts.

“That’s different.” Natasha’s voice is ice. “Laura will understand if I don’t come home. The kids will understand, eventually. You’ve survived without me before, and you can do it again. They need  _ you _ .”

“That’s not what I meant,” Clint responds. “Although, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure Lila would actually murder me if I came home without you.” He shakes his head, cutting himself off, because this isn’t the point. “I meant the  _ team _ , Nat. They need you.” More quietly, he adds, “I need you.”

“Everyone’s back together. That’s all I’ve been trying to do this whole time.”

“So now you think you can, what? Just  _ leave _ ? Drop everything and leave us behind to pick up the pieces? We still need you, Tasha.”

It’s a name he’s only used a handful of times, and only ever when they’re alone. It’s the name he uses to tear through all of her defenses and strip her to her core until there are no secrets, no lies, no games. Just them.

Just them, and an entire planet holding its breath as it waits for one of them to fall.

“There’s no way out of this, Clint.”

The logical part of him knows that she’s right. Their options going forward are simple. They can use their second set of Pym particles and return to the compound together, unharmed, and without the stone. They can forfeit their chance at getting everyone back, say it was impossible. But if they want the stone, if they want their chance, their guide had made it explicitly clear that there was no way they could both get out alive. Unless…

His mind is racing, his heart is pounding, time seems to speed up and slow down all at once. It can’t  _ possibly _ work. But at the same time, it will. It has to. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it doesn’t.

“What if there was?”

“Clint,” she warns.

“No, listen to me. I know what the guy said, but what if there was another way? A way that we could both make it out of this, with the stone. Alive. Would you do it?”

Natasha tightens her grip on his fingers, shaking her head slowly. “Whatever you’re thinking, it won’t work.”

“What if it  _ does _ , Nat?”

She drops her gaze to their joined hands.

“Do you trust me?”

Silence. A silence so thick that he feels himself choking on it.

“Natasha.” She lifts her gaze back to him when he says her name, her eyes a turmoil of confusion and fear and uncertainty. “Do you trust me?”

The past five years have given her every reason to say no. He wouldn’t blame her. He’d let her throw him off the cliff herself, if she wanted to. But she never would. She’d break her back carrying the entire team up the mountain and still jump to her death if it meant the rest of them could survive, because that’s what Natasha does. He could live a thousand lifetimes and never be a tenth of the person she is.

Slowly, without ever breaking eye contact, she nods.

They’ve already followed each other to the ends of the universe. What’s one more step?

Clint’s body feels impossibly heavy as he forces himself to rise and extends a hand. Natasha lets him pull her to her feet, following him mutely as he walks away from the cliff for a few short steps before turning again to face it. There’s an unspoken question dancing on his lips, but the words die on his tongue when he looks at her because the answer is there, written clear as day across her face. All of his doubts wither and die immediately.

_ Ready? _ he mouths, because he can’t bring himself to say it out loud.

Natasha nods, gripping his hand tightly.

Together, they take three running steps.

And they jump.

Falling to his death evokes a sense of raw euphoria Clint didn’t know was possible. It’s a free, uninhibited feeling, the wind rushing past him, catching in his hair and his clothes, tugging at his and Natasha’s joined hands, threatening to separate them. He holds on tighter in response.

As the ground rushes up to meet them he pulls her towards him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her head into his chest, as if his body wrapped around hers is enough to shield her from the fall. The ground grows closer, closer,  _ closer. _ Clint shuts his eyes tightly, and braces himself for an impact that he never feels.

The shallow water covers his body, but both his skin and clothes are completely dry. The wind has disappeared, and with it the ice and snow that it carried. The sky above him is a watercolour of orange and purple. The water parts around him as he sits, lifting the hand that’s still joined tightly with Natasha’s.

_ Natasha _ .

Natasha, who is sitting beside him, staring down at their entwined hands, which emit a soft, ethereal glow. Slowly, she loosens her grip on him, light shining through the spaces between their fingers. The stone pulses in Clint’s hand as if it has a heartbeat.

“Is that it?” she whispers, her voice as uncertain as Clint feels. “Did it work?”

“I’ve never seen the likes of this before,” comes a disembodied voice from behind them.

Natasha whips her head around, immediately on guard just as she had been at the top of the cliff when they’d first arrived. Their guide is floating a short distance away. The space behind him, where the cliff had been mere moments ago, is empty but for the seemingly never ending expanse of calm water. Clint can feel Natasha relax minutely beside him, her hand finding his once more.

“What happened?” she asks, her voice low.

“Many have travelled here,” the guide responds. “And many have left, without obtaining what they sought. Some have paid the ultimate price. But never has the likes of a double sacrifice been attempted. There was no telling how the stone would react. But it seems…” he glances pointedly at the glow surrounding their joined hands, “it seems that it has deemed your sacrifice worthy.”

“So that’s it?” Clint asks, hardly daring to believe it. “It’s ours? Just like that?”

“Wait.” Something in the tone of Natasha’s voice causes his stomach to plummet the same way it had when they’d jumped from the cliff, and all he can think is that  _ there’s more _ . Something they never thought of, something with the power to turn their victory on its head.

“You said a soul for a soul.” Natasha speaks slowly, carefully, as if she’s afraid to say the wrong thing. “But we’re both still here. So who’s soul…?”

“The soul can fracture even as the body remains whole,” their guide responds unhelpfully.

“Cut the crap,” Clint growls, pushing himself to his feet, “and tell us what you mean.” He can  _ feel _ , rather than see Natasha move to stand at his side, her fingertips brushing lightly against the back of his hand. 

“The act has caused your souls to split in two,” comes the answer. “The stone demands a sacrifice, and that sacrifice, it has received. You may leave this place in possession of the soul stone, and a single remaining soul that bonds you together. Inseparably.”

Natasha, when he turns to look at her, is smiling, the red in her hair illuminated brilliantly by the orange light that bathes the entire planet like an eternal sunset. She shrugs, tilting her head to the side to look up at him. “There are worse problems to have.”

“I take it you no longer need my guidance?”

“No,” Clint replies instantly, desperate to be rid of the floating creature who gives him a creeping, uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “No, we’re good.”

The cloaked figure turns in the direction of where the cliff had been and floats off into the distance, his tattered garment dragging along the surface of the water.

“Well,” Clint says, turning to face Natasha. “You heard Darth Maul. Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re lucky we weren’t still on top of that cliff when you made a prequels reference, Barton,” she quips. But for as much as she tries to colour her voice with humour, he knows there’s something more, can see it in the way that she avoids meeting his eyes, instead choosing to stare down at her hand despite the fact that it no longer holds the stone.

“Nat?”

Her shoulders rise and fall as she takes a deep breath. “How did you know it would work?”

“I didn’t,” he answers honestly. “I just hoped.”

“So,” she says, in a way that could almost be perceived as casual if it weren’t for the fact that her voice is shaking. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Go back?” Clint suggests.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

For a brief moment, Clint allows himself to imagine the call home after they use the stones to bring everyone back.  _ Hey Laura, it’s me. You and the kids have been gone for five years after a guy named Thanos eliminated half the population of the universe. I went to space. Time travel exists. Oh, and Natasha and I share a soul now, isn’t that neat? _ Yeah, that’s not going to be a simple conversation.

“What does this  _ mean _ , Clint? For us?” Her voice is soft, muted, as if it’s a question she’s not sure she’s allowed to ask.

He’d never believed in the concept, and certainly not in this context. Whenever Laura had brought it up he’d always laughed, found some way to brush it off. It was a word that people used to describe someone they knew intimately, but it wasn’t a  _ real _ thing. There was no way he and Natasha could actually be-

“Soulmates.” The word falls from her lips as a hushed whisper, in a way that almost sounds reverent. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“It’s not possible.”

Natasha takes a step forward and takes his hand gently in hers, lifting it so his palm faces the sky, the soul stone glowing like an ember. “A lot of things weren’t possible five minutes ago.”

And that’s just it, he realizes. Their lives are nothing but an infinite string of impossibilities. Monsters, and magic, and travel through time and space, to end up here, at the edge of the universe, their souls fused together in a way that has always felt inevitable.

“I guess you’re right,” he says.

“I usually am.” Natasha grins. “But about what, this time?”

The universe rights itself once more as Clint’s smile mirrors hers. “There are worse problems to have.”

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on tumblr (@natrasharomanova) / twitter (@hoboskywalker)


End file.
